Oil to Ashes 2, "Truce" (Linc Freemore Apocalyptic Thriller Series)

laughed Tiny and they all joined in.

  Cara Simmons, Chief Financial officer. What legitimate reason could she have for checking where each and every one of the hijacked trucks would be and what was on it?

  It seemed reasonable for Howard to check more than half the trucks. He trusted his team but he liked to know what was going on too.

  And Jack Reynolds. He could see nothing strange about the head of operations checking nearly half the schedules. He would be very concerned right now with all the hijackings. He was responsible for getting the deliveries through.

  They seemed to be enjoying the joke a lot. It didn't seem that funny to Linc.

  "Has the wife replied?" asked the brother.

  "No," answered Tiny. "I'll try again."

  He bumped Linc's arm while he fumbled with the miniature keys again. The message read "Are you there? XXOX"

  "She might be getting groceries," said Linc desperately.

  He caught a thunderous elbow in the ribs and tried to gasp quietly.

  He knew she was not. She would not budge from the house until he showed up to explain what was going on.

  Maybe they'd gone to bed early? No. She could never sleep until she had answers.

  He could no longer deny the reality. She had not received the message. Was the phone flat? What if they were all sitting on the sofa? Sitting there watching TV when a van-load of armed bikers burst through the door?

  They were ten minutes away now.

  If she didn't get them out... he couldn't think about it.

  It was hopeless.

  Guarded by these two monsters, there was nothing he could do. He'd gotten the better of one of them with a lucky shot. Two of them were impossible to beat. But Ryan. Angie. If they were going to die anyway he could at least go out fighting.

  Linc whipped the back of his elbow into Tiny's throat, put all his strength and all his weight behind it. He connected. Tiny's giant fingers wrapped around his own throat this time.

  As Tiny toppled Linc spun his hips and kicked his right leg toward Balls. He aimed his toe at the left temple, but the wrestler was faster than seemed possible for his bulk. Linc's shin struck the side of the head. Balls shook it off and kept coming.

  The fist landed on Linc's jaw like a plane crash. He tried to punch back but his body would not respond; his arm moved three inches and flopped back to his side.

  Balls knelt next to him. Linc could see and hear but it all seemed like slow motion. A brawny grin spread across his face, "Pussy." The sound was dull and distant but the body odor was strong.

  Tiny brought his fist back and aimed it at Linc.

  "Don't, bro," said Balls. "Let's keep him awake for this."

  "For that I'm gonna cut your wife and then I'm gonna fuck her while she bleeds out," said Tiny. "And if you try anything else, I'm gonna do your son too."

  Balls ripped Linc's shoes off and flipped him on his stomach like a rag doll, then squashed him flat with a knee. He wound the shoe laces around his wrists and tied them up tight.

  The odds seemed so remote to Linc that it was the same as impossible. How could he know for the second time in two days that his family was going to die? He'd saved them once, but that was against one man. Not four. And he was in a forest, miles away from them with time on his side. Not pulling up outside the house.

  The punch had numbed his senses but the reality numbed his mind. There must be a way out of this. There had to be. He'd done it before, he'd made a miracle from nothing. But nothing came. No miracle, no bright idea. He was caught and bound with a steroid fed freak on his back.

  He was helpless and for all the difference a few minutes would make, they might as well already be dead.

  He had missed most of Ryan's childhood. He'd told himself it was for the best. Work hard now and they can all enjoy the rest. Together. Later. But there was no later. He'd given everything to the company. He had missed everything good in Ryan's life, and much of Angie's too and he'd made them miserable. Now they would all miss the rest, what ever good things would have happened, now they would not.

  If only he'd gone to the Police. Everything would have turned out different. What was some time in a cell? Or even a prison sentence? It was nothing. Not compared to this.

  He'd let them down before, but never like this. He was the one that brought them here.

  Balls flipped Linc onto his back again and Tiny wrapped a length of duct tape around his mouth. The van pulled up and Tiny shoved the side door open.

  The night was black in Calistoga, street lamps and kitchen windows marked by their absence. Carol and Tony's house stood a dark silhouette against the faint red glow of the horizon. The three gables and the four big firs behind the house cut an eerie outline. The light did not reach the lawn but the fresh herbal smell of mown grass drifting through the doors confirmed that the lawn looked like it was cut with a ruler and scissors, immaculate as always. The dark sheen of the curved path, the neatly fitting pieces of granite that welcomed visitors to the front door, ambled its way across the black of the lawn. There was something serene about it in all the chaos. He might as well savor this small thing. It was the last he would get to appreciate.

  "Guns holstered boys," said the brother. "Violence is fine but remember I want them alive."

  Tiny exited the vehicle first. Linc hoped the crunch of his feet on the pebbled roadside garden would be enough for a look out the window. He was light on his feet and made hardly a sound.

  "Keep him off the pebbles bro."

  Balls handled Linc out of the van and along the blacktop between the van and the curb, over the concrete of the driveway and across to the path.

  "Not a sound or we'll both do your boy," whispered balls.

  Tiny pushed a wrecking bar between the door and the frame next to the lock. He levered it steadily until the frame splintered in a series of dull cracks and the door swung open. The sound of a tinny voice drifted into the night. Linc remembered the battery powered radio Tony kept on the kitchen bench. It seemed odd. Tony was as anal about not wasting batteries as he was about his lawn.

  "Today's announcement that all airports are closed until further notice sparked riots and looting at LAX, Detroit Metro, Dulles International and New Orleans International."

  Linc prayed the last moments had been good ones. A game of monopoly or a movie before the power went out. A hot chocolate and a hug and a kiss good night, drifting off to sleep. Never to wake, never to know what happened.

  "Violence is spreading from LAX to surrounding shopping malls."

  The small outline of the driver passed Linc on the path and stood behind Tiny at the door.

  "Police have withdrawn from the area and are attempting to form a perimeter to prevent further spread of violence."

  The driver looked back and waited, the whites of his eyes the only detail to betray his silhouette.

  The announcer moved on to the weather.

  "I'll watch him," whispered the brother from behind. "Come get me when it's clear."

  Balls moved up to join Tiny. Two hulking figures and the driver squeezed against the black outline of the door, scanning for noises that did not belong.

  Linc felt the tip of a gun barrel press sharply into the small of his back. "Not a sound."

  He thought about it. A bullet in the kidney would be a small price to pay for the heads up. But what cost if the warning failed? If they didn't escape?

  The shadows of the wrestlers dissolved into the black doorway and the driver followed, nothing but the sound of quiet footsteps picking their careful way.

  The doorway flashed a blaze of orange and discharged a peal of thunderous echos. The top half of Tiny's head disintegrated to a fleshy blur and a cloud of red mist. Over-sized muzzle flash engulfed the rest of him, lingered seemingly forever and then faded before a moment was up.

  RACK-BOOM.

  The room lit up again as Tiny's body began to topple and Balls stood behind him, disoriented by the thunder of the first shot in his ear. His massi
ve neck evaporated in the same red cloud and his head separated from his shoulders, loped high in the air and revolved anticlockwise half a turn as it arced out of sight beyond the doorway.

  Linc spun left and knocked the gun with his bound hands. BANG, the brother fired and missed.

  RACK-BOOM, again behind him.

  He continued his momentum and heaved his right knee into the brother's gut. He folded forward and Linc powered his left knee up and into the face and wished there was enough light to see the damage. Before he hit the ground Linc had leaped into the metallic cloud of burnt carbon that lingered on the porch.

  "Angie?"

  "Linc?"

  "I'm coming in! Hold your fire!"

  "Okay, it's clear."

  Linc stepped over the driver. He'd fallen in the doorway and his intestines were oozing from a hole in the side of his abdomen like a string of bloody pork sausages that smelled as sweet and rotten as the slaughterhouse they had passed earlier. He managed to avoid stepping in it.

  The wrestlers he had to climb over. Lying against each other, a bloody stump for a neck and a skull ripped open with the squiggly red lines of brains exposed. He clambered over the legs where there was no mess.

  "Could you get my hands?"

  He backed toward her and she picked at the laces around his wrists until they were free.

  Linc embraced his wife and felt tears dripping from his chin.

  "You saved us. I thought you didn't get my message. I thought I'd lost you."

  "The reception comes and goes here. I got your message but I couldn't reply."

  He held her and squeezed.

  She squeezed him back for a moment.

  "Linc, I can't breath."

  "Sorry," he squeezed a little gentler but didn't let go.

  "Where's Ryan? And Carol and Tony?"

  "With a neighbor. I made them all go. Neither of them know how to use a gun and you know Tony. He's great in the garden, but he panics when it gets real."

  "You were amazing," he finally let her go and stared into her eyes.

  "Thank God for duck hunting," she replied.

  "Who would have thought I was practicing for this," she added.

  "Thank God for duck hunting," Linc concurred.

  He held her again. He wanted to stand there forever.

  They had both struggled with shotguns at first. Rifles felt natural; hold it steady and line the cross-hairs up with the target. You can see what you're shooting at. But a shotgun was different ball game. The thick sights, the cloud of flame that erupted from the muzzle, the way the target vanished behind the ball of fire; it felt like guessing, not aiming. You couldn't even see the prey, never mind figure out if you've hit it. But they got it with practice and even took home a few ducks for their troubles.

  "There are a lot of people involved in what ever this thing is," he said eventually.

  "It's not safe for us here."

  "We have to get out of town."

  The searing embers danced and twirled upward through the plumes of noxious smoke that spewed from the collapsed gymnasium roof, glowing like evil as they settled and smoldered on the roofs of neighboring classrooms. The three of them stared forlornly as they passed and tried to avoid inhaling smoke that smelled like burnt rubber. There were no sirens or flashing lights for this blaze, only the fire to burn itself out. It wasn't just another fire, or just another school. It was the future for somebody's children. The children of Calistoga. What happens when all the schools are burned?

  Linc made a left and wound down his window to clear the smell. He pulled up next to a bank, jumped out and shoved his card in the machine and withdrew the six hundred dollar maximum. He tried again just in case and watched the machine swallow his card. He withdrew another six hundred using Angie's card, twelve hundred dollars. He wondered how far that would get them. Was twelve hundred dollars the value of their lives now?

  He climbed back in the car and U-turned. Route 128 would take them north, away from home, away from anywhere someone might expect them to go. Portland would do for now. At least nobody knew them there. He would figure out where to after that.

  Turn right in one thousand feet and follow 128 to Portland. Easy as that.

  But first he had to get by whatever was burning ahead on the street. More flames. A car this time, burning like a campfire in the distance. No, it was bigger. An inferno, raging and smoking like a beach bonfire piled high with damp driftwood and too much garbage, scorching the street lamp like a marshmallow held too close. If only they were toasting marshmallows on a beach.

  Portland would have marshmallows and they could toast them soon enough.

  He took the next right onto Cedar. There was no reason to risk driving past an inferno like that.

  He pulled up at the intersection with Elm. A gray Silverado blocked the exit. Easy enough to drive around but easier to make a left onto Elm. There were plenty of side streets in this town.

  It was a skinny street, down to one lane in places and lined with cars and dotted with dirt patches, never built on. Two more blocks and he was on route 58. He passed a lot with a chain link fence, a large oak tree and a for sale sign. Somebody was dreaming.

  He pulled up at a stop sign and waited for a van to pass. It pulled out slowly, black and shiny, a Chevrolet Express. Like the driver was showing it off to everybody who would look. It reached the center of the intersection and stopped.

  "What's he doing dad?"

  "I don't know son. Just wait. He'll move on."

  Tires squealed behind them as the gray Silverado pulled up a foot short of his rear bumper.

  The doors of both vehicles flew open and six black leather jackets surrounded the car.

  The faint odor of recently fired gunpowder wafted through the window and dull moonlight gleamed on the shotgun barrels aimed at Ryan and Angie.

  THE END

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